Yet the search giant increasingly has to deal with messy people problems. It has vowed to employ thousands of human checkers just to catch rogue YouTube posters, Russian bots and other purveyors of unsavory content.

And it’s on a buying spree to find office space for its burgeoning workforce in pricey Silicon Valley.

Google is on a frantic real estate grab along the San Francisco peninsula, assembling millions of square feet of potential office space in and around its current home in Mountain View.